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Looking out over the glassy morning water of Lake Michigan, calm ripples reached out, gently touching the shore at my feet. Graceful curves of sand stretched under clear waters, as far as the eye could see; etched into an underwater linear labyrinth by the tender hand of the divine. Stooping to scoop up a smooth brown pebble with hints of ochre, a glint of color caught my eye. Turning to find the source, I saw it there, glimmering in the water. A small piece of glass, smoothed by sand, after tumbling in the waves. Illuminated by soft morning sunlight, the sea glass glistened, true colors revealed. Hints of blue and green, in hues so pleasing to the eye; a treasure to an early morning shore dweller, like myself.

In my last post, I mentioned a small antique book that is quickly becoming a favorite of mine, Phillip Brooks’ Addresses. In his sermon True Liberty, he talks about calling and that when we find our unique calling in God, we find true freedom. Along with freedom, Brooks suggests that when we bring our nature “out into the fullest illumination,” the light of God, we may find we’re surprised by the things we might do.

His words, again I’ll say, are so poetic. Inspiring words that spur me on to not live little, but to fully realize what it means to be a child of God, in my life. I hope they inspire you, as well.

“Oh, how this world has perverted words and meanings, that the mastery of Jesus Christ should be seen to be the imprisonment and not the enfranchisement of the soul. When I bring a flower out of the darkness and set it in the sun, and let the sunlight come streaming down upon it, and the flower knows the sunlight for which it was made and opens its fragrance and beauty; when I take a dark pebble and put it into the stream and let the silver water go coursing down over it and bringing forth the hidden color that was in the bit of stone, opening the nature that is in them, the flower and stone rejoice. I can almost hear them sing in the field and the stream. What then? Shall not a man bring his nature out into the fullest illumination, and surprise himself by the things that he might do?

Oh! The littleness of the lives that we are living! Oh! The way in which we fail to comprehend, or when we do comprehend, deny to ourselves the bigness of that thing which it is to be a man, to be a child of God!”

I love books. I love bookstores. Little worlds of wonder waiting to be explored, by an arm chair adventurer and sometimes real world adventurer like myself. Big bookstores, small bookstores. Doesn’t matter the size. Read more

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